Emerging media from the borderlands of Jewish identity

incomplete stories

Yesterday morning while walking to Yom Kippur services I spoke with my father about his father’s death. I heard some strands of story about a trip to New York to visit a specialist and my grandfather’s decision not to do chemotherapy. In my father’s trademark bittersweet tone- one that brings both a smile to my mouth and that heaviness so familiar to my heart- my father suggested that his father, always a business man, weighed the options of a couple more months of life versus all the thousands of dollars he would have to spend and just chose not to.

Perhaps there was some guilt at being one of the few of his Russian family members who did get the chance to come to America, who got to build a life, and survived through it all. Apparently my grandfather used to always say “You can sleep in the grave”, perhaps he was just sick and tired from working so hard all of those years. And so my grandfather, at the approximate age of 45, decided it was his time to die. And now (perhaps inspired by the spirit of Yom Kippur) I know more about his death, but I wish to know about his life.

Here is a half remembered story about my paternal grandfather, told in the only style I’ve ever known it, incomplete and wandering- with familial dissention that interrupts the narrative and of course with plenty of bias.

Samuel went to University in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was in the Russian army and was put in the front, because the Jews always went straight to the front. But he spoke seven languages and so he could tutor the son of the captain. Because of this he was kept from fighting for some time. There was a war going on. At some point he injured himself and while on the train (being transported to a hospital?) he deserted the army. He went to his brother’s house, he asked him for help. It was very dangerous to be harboring a deserter of the Russian army. Sam’s brother got him the passport of a dead goy. His brother was a tea seller, he gave him money for boat fare to China on the condition that he send tea back to Russia. Upon getting to China Sam got the tea and was able send it the day before trade was closed. Sam got a job on a ship bound for Angel Island and worked his way across the ocean. When he arrived in San Francisco he spoke seven languages but not one of them was English. That first week he slept in the movie theaters and learned English from the movies and cartoons that played. He got a job working in a factory, stamping grade A USDA approved on packages of beef. Apparently he wasn’t so good at this, not quite fast enough. (I imagine this a little like that episode of ‘I Love Lucy’ in the chocolate factory with the conveyor belt, but less humorous). Sam’s foreman went to speak with him and Sam told him he had some kinsfolk in the mid-west who were in the grocery business. This man told Sam that if they were in the grocery business they must be millionaires. Sam set off for the kin folk. I don’t know if he ever found them or not, but he bought a truck and collected scrap metal- selling it along the way. Eventually he got to Sioux city, Iowa where he met Edith Shapiro whose family owned a movie theater. Her sister was already married, and Edith’s parents gave their movie theater to her sister and husband. Sam and Edith somehow got to Mitchell, South Dakota. Perhaps Sam scouted it out as he would often go away for stretches of time to sell scrap medal. They were the only Jewish family in the town of Mitchell. Perhaps that is why they had 9 children; their own village, two short of an Orthodox minion. Sam worked a lot with the Medonites and the Sioux Native Americans in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Somehow over the years he supported his 9 children. He was a jack of all trades and his businesses included selling goose feathers, a grocery store (’Don’t buy bananas from Sam the Jew’ they would say), and a fabric store. Sam smoked a pipe. When his children asked him for a dime to go see the movies he would give them a nickel. He believed that ‘the baby is always right’. He slept in his old army cot in the living room of his two bedroom house. He put many of his children through college. He never taught his children yiddish, russian, german or hebrew. He died before my father was 25 years old.

So my sister wrote on a posterboard she made in middle-school that Samuel came over to the US to escape WWII but in truth I believe he arrived to the US through Angel Island before 1920, well before WWII. While doing research on ancestry.org I found records from a census that noted in 1915 he was around 20 yrs old.

So could that mean that he was a Russian Army deserter from the time leading up to the first World War? I have heard stories about my grandfather on trains and more specifically of him jumping off of them. I wonder what lands he covered, and if I have travelled them to. Of course more information provokes more questions.

I have recently finished reading “The Lost”. It’s one man’s search for information and process of interviewing holocaust survivors from Bolechok(a Polish town) regarding his family members who were lost in the holocaust, whom he never met. This tale of searching has taught me a lot about what I need to look for and the challenges I will face. However, the author is from a generation above me and I am afraid there are fewer trails left for me to follow. Or perhaps there are plenty but more threadbare and scattered.

HALF-REMEMBERED STORIES

In July 2010, we will be rolling out a multi-media exhibition about lost people, lost places, and the quest to reclaim lost memory. In preparation for this exhibit, we've invited 16 young Jews, ages 15 to 25, to blog.